There is no painless solution. I guess that if we do that *informally* for now (that was Richard's approach), then option (2) could work: tools could automatically make that conversion internally and work that way. If they are nice, they can produce the newrdf: on the output if they have made any conversion in the process.
By doing it informally, we can run some sindice like search in a few years to see what the uptake is.
Note that, at least for rdf:type, if we do not do this, others will (schema.org will certainly do it) unless the microdata spec allows for multiple types in the syntax, in which case their issue becomes moot. If we have to swallow this pill, then I would prefer to have a short and nice URI at W3C, ie, independently of any specific company.
(I would not worry about owl terms for now. RDF(S) should suffice.)
Ivan
On Nov 16, 2011, at 13:58 , Steve Harris wrote:
> On 2011-11-13, at 16:44, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
>
>> On 12 Nov 2011, at 23:06, Eric Prud'hommeaux wrote:
>>> Following this scenario, we could say that <http://n.w3.org/rdf/type> and <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> are the same node
>>
>> No, they will always be different nodes, but it could be made so that in RDF 2.0 / SPARQL 2.0, the query SELECT * WHERE { ?s a ?o } would match either of these nodes. This could be achieved in various ways, for example by baking the equivalence of these terms into the basic RDF 2.0 semantics.
>>
>> If we *want* to have shorter IRIs for basic RDF/RDFS/OWL terms, then surely we can find some way to make it work, no? And surely, laying some initial non-normative groundwork *now* will help a lot to prepare for a normative introduction of these IRIs in a future round of RDF/SPARQL standardization a few years down the road.
>
> Despite it raising my hackles somewhat initially, I'm kind of warming to this idea. Or at least regarding it as inevitable.
>
> Re. what Eric said though, I believe that to make this be friendly to the way people use SPARQL now (e.g. being able to ask cardinality questions, and use it for financially important things like accounting) SPARQL stores would need to normalise to one URI form internally.
>
> Then, we have several bad choices, including:
>
> 1) replace rdf: with newrdf: in data and queries - surprising anyone that's been using RDF for any length of time, and breaking their apps
> 2) replace newrdf: with rdf: in data and queries - surprising anyone that's new to RDF
> 3) try and guess from the query/request which prefix their using, and normalise to that on output
>
> Those choices all suck for someone. Could be there's a magic solution where everyone is happy that I've not considered of course.
>
> The only thing I can imagine is the normalisation being configurable per-store, with some common default for RDF 2.0 systems. I predict that being OK with users, bearable for implementers, but making the spec very ugly.
>
> - Steve
>
> --
> Steve Harris, CTO, Garlik Limited
> 1-3 Halford Road, Richmond, TW10 6AW, UK
> +44 20 8439 8203 http://www.garlik.com/
> Registered in England and Wales 535 7233 VAT # 849 0517 11
> Registered office: Thames House, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AD
>
>
----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf